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New Social Media - The Contenders

Social networking has dominated everything. Every advertisement offers a Facebook, a Twitter, or sometimes a Google+ link. Every decent website has a social networking logo somewhere on their website, for the mad liker or the perpetual follower. Zuckerburg is one of the world’s youngest billionaires, if not the youngest billionaire. Apparently, if Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s third most populated country. That is the sheer size of social networking; “Facebook me” has become a very common expression and Twitter hashtags (#ComputerWizKid, for example) have become very popular. But there are more social giants looming over the horizon; they’re growing and will probably become as popular as Facebook or Twitter in the foreseeable future. They’re stepping over the corpses of the long-dead Myspace and Bebo and are marching in the direction of the limelight.

One prime example of these up-and-coming social giants is Tumblr. The name itself gives one an idea of the edgy and original feel the site has; while the name of the networking site looks like something inspired by somebody who types way too fast, I suppose that the name gives off the impression that the website is different and stands out. Tumblr is a growing site which is based primarily around the idea of blogging and following a blog. One can re-blog other posts, post original pictures and/or statements, and even direct questions to other bloggers on this site. It has become popular to those who enjoy sharing and have certain tastes, certain opinions and aim to give their blogs particular themes.

My reason for believing that Tumblr will day become as much of a social giant as Facebook is the popularity it has already garnered. It was this popularity which originally inspired me to mention Tumblr to begin with; a following of the site has already developed in the form of Facebook groups, which holds a rather bitter irony. As of the writing of this article, approximately 62.8 million blogs exist on Tumblr, a vast and impressive number.

Another up-and-coming social networking website that is definitely worth mentioning is Pinterest. Pintrest is a network that that allows users to share photos that interest them and manage their own collections of shared images. It’s very similar to Tumblr, in the sense that it allows users to create and manage their own theme-based page and ‘re-pin’ images to their personal collections, something which holds distinct similarities to the ‘re-blog’ option available on Tumblr. It’s already growing massively in popularity, with 11.7 million unique monthly U.S. visitors in February 2012.

But Pintrest falls short of another social networking site called Formspring, which reached 10 million monthly global visitors in 2 months, a speedier growth than Pintrest. Formspring is a site which allows users to ask each other questions and receive answers. At a glance this is a very nice possibility, something which would attract plenty of visitors. However, the site also allows users to write question anonymously, something which has resulted in cyber-bullying problems. Despite this, Formspring is definitely garnering success quickly and has the chance to catch up with the likes of Facebook and Twitter, along with the other up-and-coming sites mentioned.

― By Joseph Lumber
17-07-2012

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